Michael Wolfgang Lassalle

Due to the existence of traditional breeding methods (open pollination, mutation breeding, atomic farming) alongside recent technologies (CRISPR/Cas), the line is blurred between genetically modified organisms that require no regulation (as they have been produced by traditional methods), and GMOs (genetically modified organisms as defined by the European Union), which are created by genetic engineering. Although different breeding methods may lead to genetically identical organisms, recent progress in epigenetics and transgenerational epigenetics raises the question of whether plants possess a kind of consciousness that allows them to remember the method by which they have been created. Therefore, we cannot exclude the possibility that genetically identical organisms produced by different breeding methods exhibit different -omics (proteomics, metabolics, RNomics, epigenomics). In this paper, we summarize the recent literature on epigenetics, discuss the transgenerational epigenetic effects of different breeding methods, and emphasize the importance of strictly evaluating possible risks by assessing the final product.